Genocide: - DIIS

Introduction
During 1947 political confl icts in India escalated and a case of genocide
related to these confl icts was brought before Lemkin and the others engaged
in the work of preparing the Convention on Genocide. It was a hotly debated
issue and especially the Pakistani delegates were active in bringing the issue
before the United Nations. For Lemkin it further stressed the need for an
instrument of international law to deal with such cases and accusations. In
a brochure from the U.S. Committee for a UN Genocide Conventions – of which
Lemkin was an active member – the India-Pakistan confl ict was presented in
the following manner, “When, in 1947, over a million Moslems and Hindus
were slaughtered in a mutual attempt at extermination – THERE WAS NO
LAW AGAINST IT”. 6
The contribution by Anders Bjørn Hansen to this book “Punjab 1937-47 – A
Case of Genocide?” is in line with this understanding of the mutuality or
rather reciprocity of genocidal violence and intentions. The article provides
a detailed analysis of how violence in Punjab escalated from the occasional
low-intensity communal violence and rioting that was a traditional part of
the political confl icts during British colonial rule to the all-encompassing
exterminatory violence between the three groups in Punjab Muslims,
Hindus and Sikhs during the process of state-formation that saw Punjab
divided between the two new states of Pakistan and India. The article also
offers a critique of a too state-centred approach in Genocide Studies i.e. the
perception that genocide is necessarily perpetrated through the instruments
of the State. This is a too narrow understanding of what genocide is and how
it develops – an understanding that does not provide suffi cient leeway for
analyzing mass atrocities in the context of state-formation or in the context
of failing states. Other groups than state-controlled institutions and forces
can in these two contexts become the key instigators and perpetrators of
genocide – sometimes en route to assuming control of a new statehood.
In this sense the article on Punjab provides us with a specifi c example of what
Robert Cribb attempts to do on a more general level in his article “Genocide
in the Non-Western World”, namely to discuss what aspects of non-Western
genocides might further enlighten our understanding of the genocide case
par example – Holocaust. Genocide Studies has grown out of Holocaust
6 Ibid, Box 7, folder: Informational Material (undated).
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